a map of space & time that makes visible imperfect erasure

“We remap because, in order to go another way, the landmarks and roads described must be different.” (Vexy Thing)

Following Imani Perry’s articulation of maps as sites that draw our attention to one set of things rather than another, these visual pieces, which I call ‘palimpsestic cartographies,’ emerged from a desire to make visible liberatory Black spatial and ecological practices that persist despite the intended erasures perpetrated by colonialism, slavery, and racial capitalism. With them, I examine the way erasure is implicated in sustaining colonial imaginaries and contemporary practices of dispossession and displacement, and foreground ways of existing in space otherwise.

Each map contains concealed place names which are at first imperceptible, inviting the viewer to partake in a process of ‘deliberate discernment’ experimenting with what becomes perceivable with time and intention.

The name and process of creating these maps invoke the idea of a palimpsest, a technique originally used by artisans to reuse scarce material that involved washing, scraping, and resurfacing in order to add new text. This erasure was most often incomplete leaving traces of previous writings, in a manner that parallels the persisting nature of spatial practices which exist outside the purview of dominant exploitative modes of relating to land.